Prophecy - Book 5 of Twilight Saga (Fan Fiction)

Summary:
Refusing to follow the path laid out for her, Nessie unearths a plot that threatens her very existence. Once again the Olympic Coven must take a stand... but who can they trust? Gripping spin-off in the Twilight Saga Series as Bella and Edward struggle to keep their family together in a desperate bid to survive.

Notes:
I would love any feedback at all on the Prophecy; something that i have loved writing and want to develop to be as good as it can be!!

1. Prologue & Chapter 1 Benjamin

He paced down the long corridor passing between marble columns on every second stride. There were alcoves along both sides, evenly spaced, with lamps throwing dull orange pools of color around them. Hardly enough to illuminate the place, but there was a homely glow nonetheless.

When he was half way, he glanced to the conference phone on his right; a mine of modern day technology sitting on a three hundred year old stone pillar. How odd he was instructed to take the call in the ballroom when there was an extension right here. He glowered and quickly pressed on. It had already been a minute, and it took another thirty seconds to make it through the grand foyer.

Greta, the receptionist, was not at her desk. She had been the one to inform Felix of the call but since then she’d not returned. In fact he hadn’t passed a single person on his way, not that he seemed to care. It was always this way in the daytime, as the colored streams of sunshine shone through great windows and onto the mosaic floor. Better to stay underground through the daylight hours. In Volterra, the Italian sun gave little protection for vampires.

Felix sparkled as he passed under the atrium where the sun lit up tiny diamonds across his face and neck, but the flare of his skin had calmed by the time he mounted the great sweeping staircase that chimed with each step his boots took on the cold stone tiles. He took a left at the top and made his way into the great ballroom. It hadn’t been used as a ballroom for a hundred years, well, not in the way humans might consider a ball to be. Certainly there was plenty of feasting, but not of the ‘vegetarian’ kind.

The phone was mounted on the far wall sandwiched between two tall polished mahogany Italian dressers.

“This is Felix,” he said into the receiver in a tone that lacked enthusiasm. Perhaps it was the request to make him walk over to the other side of the palace that had shortened his fuse. “To whom am I speaking?”

There was a silence.

“Hello,” he repeated, this time aggressively. He glanced around the room. Recently everything seemed to be irritating him about this place, and a prank phone call less than a week ago had really gotten on his nerves.

“Hello.” A male voice replied; higher pitched than Felix’s with a thick American accent.

“Who is this, and why do you want to speak to me?” Felix said, coldly.

Again there was silence, then the American spoke. “I’m calling to negotiate my life.”

Felix sobered slightly, a smile creasing the corner of his lips. “Well that’s an interesting proposition,” he said with a smoother tone. “And your name is?”

“It doesn’t matter what my name is… well not yet anyway. I need to know, before we talk any further that you will spare me after what I have to say.”

“Well well, that’s certainly not something I hear every day,” Felix said. “And why on earth would you need to negotiate your life with me?”

There was a pause, long enough for Felix to catch his reflection in the huge gilt edged mirror that hung above him.

“Because in two months time you will kill me,” the American said.

Felix laughed. “That’s preposterous. Is this some kind of joke? Tell me something boy, why would I kill you? Last time I checked I wasn’t threatening anyone’s life…” ‘Well not today anyway’, Felix thought. “Who are you?”

Another pause between the two of them and Felix thought he heard a gulp.

“You don’t know me, at least not yet.”

“And if I don’t know you, what makes you so certain that I’m going to cross your path. What makes you so certain that I’ll…” Felix paused and smiled. “That I’ll kill you.”

“Because you’re a vampire.”

Felix laughed down the phone. “Interesting,” he said. “Might I ask how you came by my number? It’s not often people call this residence, ask for me and then accuse me of being a… vampire. Whatever next – are you going to tell me that you’re a werewolf and we’re to meet for tea at the next full moon?”

Felix listened to the sound of the American’s quick breathing down the line. It had been a while since Felix had bothered to breathe; why pretend when it’s really not that necessary anyway.

“The girl yesterday,” the American said. “She was a teacher you know, taught five year olds, only been in the job a year, but had finally found something she enjoyed. She had been on a couple of dates with a guy, was thinking it might go somewhere—.”

“And you’re telling me about some girl, why?”

“After dusk last night you followed her home,” the American said. Felix’s eyes widened. “She wasn’t going to go to the store for milk,” he continued, “especially since she’d already put on her pajamas, but she thought her flat mate might notice the smell of the old milk in the refrigerator and blame her for not replacing it already, so she got dressed, and made it there before closing time. But unlucky for her, you followed her home. You pulled her off the road by the Bellamossa Citadel and drained her blood. Ring any bells?”

“Who is this?” Felix yelled into the phone. And then he growled. His scarlet-red eyes flashed as he recalled the girl whose life he had taken.

“First I need your word.”

“My word?” Felix said.

“That you shall spare my life.”

“And what shall you be giving me in return?”

The American paused, again. “In return, I’ll save yours.”

This time there was a cold silence between the two of them. Felix glanced around the room again. If he could sweat he would have seen the beads running down his neck in the mirror’s reflection, but instead the fear welled up within him. Now he was listening. “Tell me stranger, what do you see?”

“Not now,” said the American. “I will call back in exactly three hours.”

“I won’t—.”

“You’re not going to the opera,” he said flatly. “You’ll draw the short straw and be forced to stay and keep watch on the palace while the... others go. They will have left by ten past seven. I will call you at seven thirty.”

Felix didn’t speak, but already the anxiety was starting to swell within.

“Take the call in the ballroom only, you understand?”

“I understand,” Felix said.

Then the American hung up.

Instead of returning to his private quarters, Felix spent most of the time procrastinating in the ballroom; pacing the long lengths of Italian stone in heavy, obdurate steps. Perhaps hunting would settle him, although he had no way of contacting the American and there was hardly enough time to make it out of the walls of Volterra and back before seven thirty. No, hunting was out of the question, and so Felix stayed and contemplated his own death.

The life of a vampire was hard to take; it was not something that happened by accident. It had to be calculated and executed correctly. First the head must be ripped off. Then the body set alight and reduced to cinders. Felix could hardly bear to imagine it.

Instead he started to work through all the vampires that he had irritated over the years. There were certainly many, but he doubted anyone would dare assault him when he was a part of the most formidable coven in the world. The Volturi.

And then a dark thought sprung to mind; the Volturi. Would they be the ones to bring his life to an end? Was it possible that he had become dispensable to them?

Sure he didn’t have a gift as so many of the others did, but he was strong and fiercely loyal and that should count for something. Felix recalled the time when he would have been drawn upon to pull in any rogue vampire. Not anymore. The younger ones like Alec and Jane made it far too easy.

Come to think of it, the leaders of the Volturi - Caius, Marcus and Aro - hardly ever requested his presence at their quarters anymore, nor was he invited to the university lecturer’s big speech at the start of the month. In fact, they had not even included him in the centenary dinner; an event that he had founded. Instead they had sent him on a dead-end assignment to South America, seeking out a horde of strays. Felix grated his teeth together, another superfluous human mannerism. When he had not found the rouges, he’d suspected that the mission was bogus; South America had been a waste of time. Now, he was certain of it. They were pushing him away, and now they wanted to dispose of him entirely. This confirmed it; Felix’s position within the Volturi had finally slid off the scale.

“Felix?” The American said three hours later. The phone was in Felix’s hand before the first chime had fully rung out.

“Tell me everything,” Felix snapped back, trying hard not to snarl. “I want to know your name, I want to know about your gift, and above all I want to know what you see about me.”

He waited in silence for a moment. Humans were so slow to speak. They had to take a moment to collect their thoughts. They needed time to think.

“My name is Benjamin,” the stranger said, and this time Felix detected a strange urgency in his voice, perhaps desperation.

Felix softened his tone. “You said I will kill you, and then I will be killed. How? And why?”

“Everything’s changed,” Benjamin replied. “An opportunity has arisen for them. The course of events are worse, the setting is different, and we no longer have months...”

“Yes,” Benjamin said. “Yes, you still die, because you didn’t listen.” He sounded perplexed. “Felix, you gave me your word.”

‘I didn’t actually say that,’ Felix thought, although already he was starting to change his mind. Benjamin had to have the gift. Not just because he’d known about that little brunette appetizer the other night, but Benjamin was able to see that he had no intention of protecting him. He’d seen through the lies so now Felix had to be sincere, after all, if this American was telling the truth then he was a fool to play games, not when his life depended upon it. “Okay, you have my word. I shall spare your life at all costs,” he said. “Now what is this all about?”

The tension seemed to ease on the other end of the phone line, perhaps it was a simple exhale from Benjamin that Felix detected.

“It’s all comes down to the girl,” Benjamin said.

“What girl?” Felix could think of nothing but his own life.

“The one born of a human mother and a vampire father. You know who I am talking about.”

Felix took a breath. It was not often he did so, but this surprised him. This was the girl the others had been talking about. Whispers had floated around the palace. This is the girl who had them all in a panic. She was fully-grown now, and they knew the Prophecy.

Felix nodded down the phone. “You must mean Renesmee Cullen.”

Outside the great ballroom and across the palace Felix felt a great trembling. The others were back. But it was too soon for the Opera; it hadn’t even been an hour since they left. As the marching grew louder, Felix knew that the time had come. The doors to the great ballroom were thrown open.

“There is something you must do,” Benjamin said, throwing his words out faster.

The line went dead.

FIVE WEEKS EARLIER

Chapter One: Benjamin

I’m not sure when I had my first vision. Prior to June 2nd, I cast them off as weird dreams; too much coffee before bed stirring up the cortisol or endorphins or whatever caffeine reportedly does to the human body, which went on to cause these vivid hallucinations in my sleep. My mother - prone to nerves – had already sought advice from her homeopath, who amongst other things had me on herbal tea instead of coffee, and a myriad of pills lined up in a plastic box like soldiers on the front line. Each one came with an offering of peace, a white flag in my self-conflicting mind.

But it didn’t change anything. I still saw them.

There was the tall man I’d nicknamed Frankenstein, not just because of his sheer size, but for his impossibly flat jaw and bulging muscles that pushed through his clothes. There was a student from the school I interned at called Jennifer Moroney, a young toddler who lived by the beach, a handful of adults ranging from late-teens to elderly, and then there was Snow White. Like the majority of my visions, I’d never met her in real life and so didn’t know her name, but she was the one who puzzled me most. My visions of her were distinctly odd. For one thing, the visions were all the same.

At first I thought it was déjà vu, but then looking back, I noticed subtle differences. Snow that wrapped around the window-sills or soft pink petals stuck to the sole of a pair of Birkenstocks by her bed. In each vision Snow White was asleep and in slumber she looked serene; porcelain skin from which I’d adopted the term Snow White, with thick auburn hair in matted waves across the pillow. Although closed, her eyes were wide-set with dark eyebrows that framed her face. She had the cheeks of an adolescent, not quite chiseled with not even the slightest warmth of color.

In the latest vision she wore pajamas; the old fashioned type with a pink and red crisscross pattern and a button down front. This time it was still dark outside. Although I couldn’t see it, I knew that once she woke and checked her phone it would read 2am across its screen.

But the thing that really got to me was the part that remained the same. Each time she awoke suddenly, bolt upright in her bed. Horror, pain, confusion and desperation bubbled upon the surface of her sultry face, laced with years of anguish she could not have possibly known.

Could this girl see the future too?

On June 2nd it happened.

Some would call it a breakthrough, although I definitely would not. Jennifer Moroney was hit by a green Ford Mustang as she passed through the school gates. She was thrown to the steps of the science block some twenty feet away and her bag spat out Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet onto the road, which was unduly destroyed beneath the wheels of a bus. But no one paid attention to the book, least of all me. I’d seen the whole scene before, in my dream back on April 8th. I knew where her body would land and like everyone else in the lot that day, I ran towards her as she hit the ground.

While the green mustang sped away, a crowd amassed around Jennifer’s body with screams that pierced the gathering clouds and brought forth a heavy shower. Then some other teachers came running too. Everyone panicking. Everyone desperate. Everyone horrified that something like this could happen in the small southern town of Biloxi.

Before the loud swirling sound of the ambulance it was just their voices that filled the thick wet air. Everyone had some burning question on the tip of their tongues. The only question on my lips, ‘how did I, Benjamin Brandon know that Jennifer Moroney was going to die?’

The future was not something that I wanted to know. Gut reaction, take it away, I was getting by just fine knowing only what had gone before. It took all my courage to stand up and lecture to the class day after day, but this was an obstacle that even I couldn’t fathom.

I must have played it a hundred times in my head. Every time I closed my eyes, I watched the green car sweep Jennifer off her feet, her schoolbag fly off, the car speed away. The detail had ingrained itself into my memory like etched metal that could never be worn down. I know what I saw that day in the parking lot - a young girl wearing a yellow ribbed vest with white edging and faded blue jeans. Everyone saw it. Yet in my vision she was writing a text message on a pink phone with diamantes in the pattern of Hello Kitty across the back. The text was to Brad; she was telling him she was looking forward to meeting him in Chino’s for lunch. She was chewing Wrigley’s gum, which smelt of peppermint, her hair was tied back in a high ponytail with a pink band with gold flecks that sparkled in the sun and she dragged her heels on the sidewalk as she walked in flat gladiator sandals liking the way they caught the concrete flags underfoot and made a clicking sound.

Yes, I could visualize each and every feeling that she had that morning as she walked to school. It was the first time I knew beyond all reasonable doubt that the visions were more than just vivid dreams; they were premonitions. After that I started paying more attention. After that I started to believe.

Even so, it still took a week to fully sink in; the same amount of time it took for Jennifer’s parents to prepare the funeral and for the relationship with my parents to reach a new low.

“My friend Rita told Liz, and Liz told Jesse, that her daughter Clara sees things,” my mother said on the eve of the funeral. I’d picked out my newest black suit and had brought it downstairs to press.

“Who’s daughter?” I said, hooking the hanger on the door-knob before sitting down to eat.

She pushed her glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “Rita’s daughter, Clara. She always tells stories of when she was younger but they never happened. Rita didn’t just the leave the dogs in the house when they went skiing up in Vancouver, and they definitely didn’t lose Clara for two hours after school back in the fall. She just comes out with these things; they’re just made up.”

“You think I’m making this up?” I stabbed into the tuna pasta bake. It was one of my favorite meals, but I didn’t have the appetite for it.

“No, no, it’s just Rita’s daughter is so insistent that these ‘events’ actually occurred. Maybe she’s confused? Maybe you are too?”

I pushed the plate away so that it scraped on the glass table. My father continued to eat his meal quietly while my mother carried on with enough concern for the two of them.

“I saw this happen two months ago, and now that girl is dead,” I said, standing up.

My father glanced up for long enough to show disapproval before returning his attentions to his blackberry; an item which he openly hated, yet lost himself in whenever his opinion might be sought.

“Rita said it was called False Memory Syndrome, an emerging disorder. It’s not very well documented yet, but the doctors, they all take it seriously, and I can see why it would be so realistic. You were right there when that girl died. Maybe the shock...”

“It’s not shock, mom.”

“Don’t raise your voice at your mother.” This time my father didn’t even look up to see me take my plate. I brushed the remains into the bin and stacked it in the dishwasher.

“Well did you write it down?” She continued. “Perhaps if next time you were to write it down and show us, we’d be able to help? Come to us before it happens?”

Before it happens. Like I was supposed to know when she would be hit.

I shook my head and left the room.

They closed school for the morning so the entire student body as well as staff could attend the funeral. Her parents sat at the front. The mother, a larger lady, looked gaunt in the face and trembled like a leaf. The father was motionless all but for his back teeth, which he crunched down on giving his jaw definition. There was an older brother who looked about my age in a pinstripe suit that suggested he’d used his degree to get himself a whole lot further than I had; perhaps a graduate position in the city.

The majority of the school had known her as Jenny the cheerleader. I didn’t even know that, but then I had only taken my trainee role here nine weeks ago. I had known her face from around campus and recognized her immediately in the vision, but now that meant only one thing. I had known more than two months ago that she would be hit by that car – I’d been given a head-start to save her, and of that I had failed.

As I listened to the headmaster’s eulogy, praising Jennifer for being such a hard working, bright, sunny student, I received the vision that changed my life forever. Perhaps it was my karma, but to me it just looked like my death.